The Man Who Gets Drunk Next to Me

He was a lawyer and he had a brother. Maybe the brother was the lawyer. In any case, they both wore French cuffs and they bought the drinks, and when you buy the drinks, I don't care if you're a professional puppy smotherer.

Flipper and I were seated at our usual pre-cover table-- near the back, next to the ladies' room-- and we watched them watch us. One made the approach, and invited us to move from the bathroom to the center of the room. Flipper and I made a mutual eye-check (Okay with you? Okay. Okay with you? Okay. Moving forward. For even in a pack as small as ours, one would never rise from that table without the other.)

The presence of the gentlemen meant that we could turn from house wine to mixed drinks, and I immediately began drinking like a girl, ordering hurricanes left and fuzzy navels right. The piano players on stage dug into "I'm Gonna Be" midway between the two, and the four of us pounded on the table, unspooling dueling "Dahlaladahs!" which were the only lyrics we could handle at that point anyway.

Why didn't we leave it there?

Why did we walk with them out of the bar, by the manmade lagoon underneath the burn of the neon lights?

Because they bought the drinks, and because I'm the type of person who slinks away from the deli counter to buy half a pound of turkey which is incorrectly sliced because she cannot bear to tell the employee to cut it the way she wants. Flipper saw me dart away from the lawyer, or the lawyer's brother, whatever, and back to the yellow light of Margaritaville, far from the dark raining beads of Pat O'Brian's.

"You had to be an ass, didn't you?" I heard her say as I made for the false daylight.

"What did he do?" she asked once she reluctantly disentangled herself from the lawyer, or the lawyer's brother.

I inhaled the humidity, the wispy fumes of alcohol. Something gross and something wrong. "I'm in one piece," I said, eyes still closed.

"Are you all right?"

"He didn't touch me." I leaned back against the bench. Physically, mentally, emotionally all right, and spiritually quite another thing.

Flipper joined me on the bench. "It will be a little bit before I'm okay to drive," she said.

"That's okay," I said. "I'm a little lost myself."